The decision

Here's the rule. Nothing daily gets called a treat.

That's it. It isn't a rule about wine, or chocolate, or television, all of which you can still have. It isn't a rule about how many. It's a rule about the word. If a thing comes every day, it's a routine, and you can keep it as a routine if you want to, without the earning. If you want to call it a treat, it has to be rare enough to be one, chosen before the hour, for a reason you'd say aloud, and noticed. Chapter 18 gave you the two ways to get there, and you've picked one.

Three when-then plans, which are a form the research on planning supports, a specific situation paired with a specific act, so the act doesn't need deciding at six.

When it's six o'clock and my hand goes to the treat, then I ask whether today was decided this morning, and if it wasn't, I do the hour's other thing, the walk or the call or the pan, and the treat can be tomorrow, chosen.

When I hear myself say "I've earned it", then I say what I actually did today in one sentence, and if the sentence is a reason, I have the treat, and if it's just a day, I don't.

When the evening goes flat, then I let it, and I notice what the flatness is like, and I don't fill it with a substitute, because the flatness is the hour learning, and it'll be shorter tomorrow.

What to expect, and this is my expectation and not a finding. The first week has three or four flat evenings and one or two treats that are better than any you've had this year. The second week has fewer flat evenings, because the hour is learning, and Phillippa Lally and colleagues, in a study of everyday habits, found that a daily behaviour in a fixed setting became automatic over weeks, and I'd expect the unlearning to run on something like the same clock. Somewhere in the second month the hour stops reaching. Six o'clock is just six o'clock, and on the evenings that have a treat, you'll know why, and you'll taste it. And the earning will have gone quiet, not because you stopped it, but because it had nothing to license.